The workhorse. Nearly two thirds of every clue in the game.
A synonym clue points at a word by meaning the same thing. That is the whole mechanism, and it is the foundation of the entire game. Every other clue type in Cryptune is a departure from this one, which is why it is worth understanding properly before anything else.
The interesting part is not the definition, it is the distance. A clue that reads "cold" for the word COLD is not a puzzle, it is a mirror. A clue that reads "freeze" is a puzzle, because you have to travel from a verb to an adjective and from an action to a state. The craft of writing these is the craft of choosing exactly how far away to stand: close enough to be fair, far enough to be work.
The best synonym clues in the game describe the thing without ever using its register. A decorative woven wall hanging is a fair and complete description of a tapestry, and it sounds like an auction catalogue rather than a record sleeve, which is exactly why it takes a second to land.
Because this type is so dominant, it is also the correct default assumption. Faced with an unfamiliar clue and no other information, read it as a synonym first. You will be right most of the time, and the times you are wrong will usually announce themselves quickly.
Cryptune contains 1106 synonym clues, which is 64% of every clue in the game, spread across 685 puzzles. They break down as 469 on song puzzles, 359 on album puzzles, 278 on artist puzzles.
a decorative woven wall hanging→TAPESTRY
From Tapestry. A complete and honest definition, delivered in a register nobody uses about music. The clue is not hiding anything. It is just standing far enough away.
the occurrence of meaningful coincidences→SYNCHRONICITY
From Synchronicity. A long clue for a long word. Where a title is unusual enough to have only one possible meaning, the clue can afford to be precise, because precision still does not give it away.
extremely serious→DIRE
From Dire Straits. Two words pointing at one. Note how the clue makes you think about severity, which is nowhere near the nautical sense the title is playing on.
a light red colour→PINK
From Pink. The clue describes the colour, the answer is a person. Half the pleasure of a one tile puzzle is that the tile solves easily and the answer still needs a second leap.
Synonym clues tend to read as descriptions rather than instructions. If a clue could plausibly appear in a dictionary entry, or sounds like the second half of a definition, you are almost certainly looking at one.
Watch the part of speech. A good synonym clue matches the grammar of its answer, so a clue phrased as a verb is pointing at a verb. That constraint is genuinely useful when you have several candidate words and need to choose between them.
When a synonym clue will not fall, the usual problem is that you have the right meaning and the wrong word. Try saying the meaning out loud in several different registers, formal, casual and slangy, because song titles are rarely written in the formal one.
A wider sample, clue on the left and the word it hides on the right.
Back to the clue school, or see how clue types vary across the eras on the decade pages.